``But tell me, doctor, where do you plan to conduct the hatching?'' Alex asked.

``That will have to be in the hotel,'' the doctor retorted, confirming Alex's anticipations. ``What I want you to do is to go to the market with me early tomorrow morning and help smuggle the hen back into the hotel.''

The doctor paid the bill and they repaired to the hotel, room number nine, to initiate Alex further into these undertakings.

The doctor opened the smallest of his cases, an unimposing straw bag, and exposed the contents for Alex's inspection. Inside, carefully packed in straw, were six eggs, but the eye of a poultry psychologist was required to detect what scientifically valuable specimentalia lay inside; to Alex they were merely six not unusual hens' eggs. There was little enough time to contemplate them, however; in an instant the doctor was stalking across the room with an antique ledger in his hands, thoroughly eared and big as a table top. He placed it on Alex's lap.

``This is my hen ledger,'' he informed him in an absorbed way. ``It's been going since 1908 when I was a junior in college. That first entry there is the Vermont Flumenophobe, the earliest and one of the most successful of my eighty-three varieties -- great big scapulars and hardly any primaries at all. Couldn't take them near a river, though, or they'd squawk like a turkey cock the day before Thanksgiving.''